New Episodes for Super Science Friends – Interview

In 2014, we found on Kickstarter one of the projects that so far was one of the most intriguing: scientists travel through time¬†brought¬†together thanks to Winston Churchill in order to fight Nazis, Soviet cosmonauts and their scientific rivals. No idea of what I’m talking about? Well, not to worry: Super Science Friends is an animated series that backed the pilot episode in 2014 and¬†was released last year in November. You can watch it below.

Now the Tinman Creative Studios, the team behind the creation of Super Science Friends and lead by Brett Jubinville, are¬†asking backers to fund on Kickstarter the next episodes of this fantastic series. We had the chance to interview a second time Brett (you can find the first interview here) on the project and what’s the future of Super Science Friends.

1. The first episode was a success: international press covered your Kickstarter project and the¬†final result, new fans¬†supporting your Studios, thousands of views on Vimeo, YouTube and¬†Facebook, and most of all you kept the promise¬†to your backers. In the first interview, I¬†asked you whether the project was a marketing tool to promote Tinman¬†Creative Studios.¬†How did this success translate for Tinman Creative Studios?

I would say the success of Super Science Friends hasn’t really had a huge impact on Tinman. ¬†While we’ve gotten a bit of fanfare out of it, the focus has definitely been on the show, not the company that produced the show. ¬†And to be honest, that’s probably the way it should be. ¬†I’d rather have people interested in the characters we’ve created and the stories we’re telling. ¬†That being said, it’s always fun when one of our crew members gets recognized on the street or has someone gush about the show to them.

2. For the production of your first episode, you asked for 25.000 CAD. This time, you asked for¬†150.000 for the¬†production of at least 3 episodes. Why did you choose such a high target?

We learned a lot doing our first Kickstarter, mainly about things like “over-promising on rewards” and “shipping costs”. ¬†In my first update on our current Kickstarter, I talk about this. Basically, the money we raised from the first Kickstarter was only enough to cover the costs of the rewards and shipping said rewards. ¬†This time around we wanted to try and resolve that and make sure the majority of the money people pledged was going toward actual production.

Currently, in all of our reward tiers at least 60% goes toward production, and no more than 40% goes toward the rewards. ¬†This seemed like a more appropriate balance.

3. If the amount you are hoping to receive will not be reached, is that the end for Super¬†Science Friends?

If our current Kickstarter isn’t successful, it will definitely delay us, but it won’t be the end of Super Science Friends. ¬†It may just mean that we’re only able to produce one episode this year instead of three. ¬†The demand for episode 2 has been so high however that we’re really hoping we can produce multiple episodes simultaneously and build on the momentum that we get when we release one. ¬†It was kind of a shame we didn’t have a bunch of episodes ready to go, considering the amazing response the first one got. ¬†That’s the curse of the “pilot” though. ¬†Either it does poorly and you think “Well, at least, I only did one. ¬†No big loss.” or it does really well and you think “Dammit, the next one won’t be ready for another 10 months.”

4. In your first interview, you told us that you wanted to produce 13 episodes, and 6 of them¬†were already planned. Is that¬†still your plan?

We actually have 7 episodes planned out at the moment, and each one focuses on one member of the team. ¬†So for example, episode 2 is the “Tesla” episode, episode 3 is the “Freud” episode and episode 4 is the “Marie Curie” episode. ¬†13 episodes would allow us to do all of those, plus have a bunch of episodes that are more “team” focused. ¬†We’d also like to do at least one episode set in the world of our Super Science Friends: 2099 comic where Ada Lovelace is the protagonist.

5. After the launch of the first episode, what are the most common comments you received?

“When is episode 2?” is by far the most common comment. ¬†We also got a lot of requests for subtitles in other languages. ¬†To date, the first episode has been translated into 10 languages, all by fans of the show. ¬†That’s been pretty incredible.

We also get complaints about the various accents in the show, which is understandable. ¬†I voice Freud, and I would say my German accent ranks somewhere between “awkward” and “mildly offensive”.

My favourite comment so far though was when one gentleman told me that he played “Law of Attraction” (the song from our end credits) at his wedding, and he and his wife danced to it. ¬†That was really fun.

6. Since the first time we spoke, have any new members joined the Studios?

We’ve had a few new faces in the studio, which has been really fun. ¬†We’ve got a great group of artists working with us. ¬†We’re also working on a variety of pre-school projects so Super Science Friends can be a nice project to work on that’s pretty wildly different from the day-to-day stuff.

7. Curiosity: after watching the first episode, I noticed all the characters have red noses: why is¬†that?

This is also a question I get a fair bit. ¬†The short answer is that it’s just a design choice I made when I designed the characters. ¬†I like the way it looks. ¬†The longer answer is that when I first designed the show, my intention was for it to be far more minimalistic. ¬†There were only going to be about 4 colours used. Black, red, cyan and yellow. ¬†Once we got into it, that quickly became unrealistic and as we added the full-colour spectrum, the red I had used for the nose stayed. ¬†So it’s a hold-over from a previous design sensibility. ¬†That being said, I still like the way it looks.

We would like to thank Brett for his time and wish him and the Tinman Creative Studios good luck with their new Kickstarter project that you can help funding here.